Flyfly: Why Did This Get Cancelled?

So I started watching Firefly on DVD. This was a TV series which aired during the 2002-2003 season, but was cancelled after only airing 11 episodes. The series is excellent. I'm rather disappointed that the FOX network cancelled the show.

But the movie is coming out Sept. 30. I'll most likely wind up waiting for it to come out on DVD (and will buy the DVD) as watching movies in the movie theaters just isn't fun anymore.

I Need a ReplayTV Remote On My PowerBook

Argh! My Pronto remote is out of reach and the Simpsons episode I was playing on the ReplayTV just ended. My PowerBook is on my lap while I am working on an article - why don't I have a dashboard widget to control the ReplayTV right from the Mac? Now I have to put down the laptop, move, get the remote, return, get comfortable again, put the laptop back on the lap. *sigh*

IBM Turns to Open Source

As an IBM stockholder all I can say is: way to go IBM! IBM is breaking up their products into components, increasing reuse. This can only lead to faster development of new products, both inside and outside of IBM. Eclipse is just the tip of the iceburg for them. It looks like the Rational and Lotus Notes suites are next.

BetaNews | IBM Turns to Open Source Development (via Slashdot)

BeOS Lives Again

I remember back around 1996 when Be first came to the market with their BeBox and BeOS products. I was rather interested in their machines as they were all dual PowerPC 603s. Never before had a company really focused on the benefits of a dual processor desktop system, and most dual processor Intel boxes were out of the reach of people.

What was really interesting however wasn't the boxes, but the OS. An entirely new platform which provided a very effective multimedia system. The backbone was a system composed of a large number of threads and clean APIs.

Be died when Apple didn't buy them (they bought NeXT instead) and Gateway and Dell couldn't ship BeOS for x86 on their systems due to their contracts with Microsoft (monopoly anyone?).

It looks like a Germany company has finally brought back the ideals of the BeOS:
yellowTAB - Makers of ZETA . Whoopie. Gateway and Dell still can't ship it.

The People Behind Family Guy

Just discovered the Family Guy Blog, thanks to the link posted over at MeFi. These folks have a crude sense of humor, but its just too funny to not watch every episode they produce. I watched Family Guy in reruns on Adult Swim until I'd seen everything 2 or 3 times, always finding something new in each episode. I'm very happy Fox has brought it back and made it a part of their Sunday night lineup!

Its Not a Googlewhack, But It's Close

When I was trying to name my site I was looking for something which would not only describe me, but would also rank well on a Google search for the term. Now that Google has reindexed my site, it looks like I am number one: Google Search: insufficiently random.

This is much better than my Yahoo! search ranking, which was number 3 for the term "ready to assemble bookcase". I used to get over 60% of my web traffic from that term at Yahoo!. It looks like they finally updated their index and I'm no longer listed on the first page. This is good, as those poor visitors were looking at a failed home theater project rather than shopping for inexpensive bookcases.

Red Vs Blue Season 3 = Good Comedy!

Season 3 of Red Vs Blue was excellent. The end definitely has me waiting for them to start season 4. I want to know what happens to Gary!